Use Google Voice Search On Your Desktop

Posted November 27, 2013 • By P Chandra

It was bound to happen. Google Voice Search can now be done from your desktop and laptop without clicking any button, directly from the Chrome browser. Similar to how Google Glass users say OK Glass to activate actions, OK Google is the new way to talk to Google … and this brings the power of Google search to your desktop.

Google Voice Search

If you visit the Google.com on any Google Chrome, you can anyway click the microphone icon and start speaking for Google to initiate a Google search. But if you install the Google Voice Search Hotword Chrome extension, then when you visit Google.com, your microphone stays active listening to when you say ‘OK Google‘, which is the keyword phrase that prompts it to initiate a search for whatever is spoken after that.

See this video on how this works

Although they claim this works right now in English language in the US only, I was easily able to install and run this extension in India. See how my Google.com form has changed to show ‘Say OK Google”.

And when I say some keywords, it recognizes them easily and outputs a search result. It is amazing how accurately Google can recognize speech (though it is preferable to speak slowly and clearly for best results).

So what are you waiting for, download the chrome extension and start talking to Google without a keyboard!

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5 Comments

I never thought that desktops could also function as smartphones. It is just now that I can see so much of a comparison for both of the products. Voice search, on the other hand, will be a little problematic for those who have really different accents. How will Google handle that?

After Google Hummingbird update I think that search result is less give attention to the keywords and display what actually user want. This is keeps some good rank site behind in search results. What you say author about this??